561 Questions from the Community

I have been looking for some time to buy one of those, but my provider requires VLAN IEEE 802.1Q support for the router to connect TO the Optical Network Terminal. I saw many people in forums having issues on this sometime ago.
I don't want to use the router supplied by the provider as a bridge, as it just adds overheads.

Here's my dilemma: My modem, AirPort Extreme, and speakers are in my living room. The speakers are plugged into AirPort Extreme so I can play my music from any device. At the other end of the house is my study where I'd like to place the Time Capsule so that I can backup my laptop and so that I can extend the wifi signal in my house. Is that possible? And even if it is, am I wasting the Time Capsule's router capabilities by using the Extreme as the router and the Time Capsule as a means to extend signal?

And why on earth is Extreme the only router capable of connecting to speakers??

Did exactly this recently and was blown away by speed of connection, and double the signal strength. However I had an old Airport express which i connected to speakers and gave me more sound in second room while Apple TV connected to a Bose unit in lounge. Drive the lot off Remote App anywhere in the house

Regarding files, this device can act as two different things - a Time-Machine-enabled Backup device, or a Shared Network Hard Drive.

As a Tme-Machine-enabled backup device, it will back up everything from your Mac(s) at regular intervals. This includes all the files on your Mac - documents, movies, music etc. You can then use it to revert to previous versions of files, to restore deleted or damaged files, or to restore the entire mac from a backup. Note, if you use it in this way, don't expect to be able to browse or read your files as simple files. Time machine backs use a sparse bundle and file links. You can get to your files manually if you want, don't expect to be able to hook up a home media centre to access those files easily. They are managed by time machine, and really should only be accessed through the Time Machine software for restoration.

As a shared network hard drive, you can consider it to be a file server. You can access the hard drive, over the network (wired or wireless) from any machine on the network (Mac or Windows). As such, you could use it to store your music and movies and access them from anywhere, including from any home media centre that can access a shared network volume (i.e. not AppleTV).

You should use it for one or the other, not both. Note, you *can* do both, but you really should not. When used for Time Machine backups, it really likes to manage hard drive space itself. When the disk gets full, it deletes older backups. It works best when it is fully aware and fully in control of the drive space

I would like to migrate my data files from a Windows 7 laptop (documents, pictures, music) to a MacBook Pro, probably using an external hard drive. Can I treat the AirPort Time Capsule as an external hard drive for both machines via the USB port?

I have a 4th-gen Time Capusle bought in 2012. I set up a guest network for visiting friends & families. But sometimes kids will watch videos on their iPad/iPhone all day long, eating up my data allowance and slowing down network speed.

Is there a way I can limit data usage and speed (say, 1GB per day at no faster than 5Mbps download) on Time Capsule's connected devices?

Would i be able to move my iTunes library on to this and have a wired connection between this and my iMac then also have a wireless connection to my macbook. In theory i would be able to import a CD to my iMac (the master for iTunes) and then have it also on my macbook in iTunes.

I have a macbook and macbook pro which are both used independently. I would like to use a time capsule to store files and iTunes and iPhoto libraries. What I am looking to achieve is to be able to stream wirelessly my files between either of the computers and access iTunes and iPhoto from either machine. The majority of hard drive space would then be freed up on both machines and for no loss of service. I would think that playlists and albums would be unaffected by this change. Any advice would be gratefully received. Many thanks